Gurney, Ivor Bertie

(1890-1937)

   Born in Gloucester, England, the son of a tailor, he was educated as a chorister of Gloucester Cathedral. He began composing music at the age of 14 and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1911, studying under Sir Charles Stanford. He enlisted into the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1915, was wounded, and gassed during the third battle of Ypres. After the war he resumed his musical studies but was unable to concentrate. There is consensus that he suffered from some form of mental illness, and he did try several times to commit suicide. He spent the last years of his life at the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford, Kent, where he died from tuberculosis. In addition to his songs, he wrote poetry; many of his poems celebrate the Gloucestershire countryside. He is one of the poets of World War I memorialized in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. Two of his volumes of poetry are Severn and Somme, 1917, and War's Embers, 1919. Some of his poems: "Bach and the Sentry," "Cotswold Ways," "Sonnet - September 1922," "The Silent One," "Yesterday Lost," "Ypres-Minsterworth."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Ivor GurneyPoet-Composer (http://www.geneva.edu/Gurney, Ivor Bertiedksmith/gurney/index.html). Selected Poems of Ivor Gurney. P.J. Kavanagh, ed. Oxford University Press, 1990. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Westminster Abbey Official Guide (no date). Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).